Saidi Maniriho left Kigali for Kampala in June 2018, where his mom lives, hoping with a grocery store to begin life.
“I never thought at some point that Kampala is a no-go-zone for a Rwandan,” he told journalists on Sunday, in addition, as a citizen of the Eastern African Community (EAC), he believed that he was free to move to any country in the bloc and work there for as long as he had the means.
A few months later, in January this year, a good morning, Maniriho, who had been doing business in Uganda for six months, booked a bus to return to Kigali to sort out a few private problems and check out families.
He was intercepted and detained by security agents before boarding the bus along with a few other Rwandans, who were accused of being Rwandan troops on a Uganda spy mission.
“First, they asked us to hand over the guns we possessed,” he recalls.
“The word spy is strange to me and, I have never been a soldier all my life. In my family none knows to handle a gun,” he told the adamant security operatives.
Security officers were unwilling to listen, according to Maniriho. They took the group to a prison facility in a suburb of Kampala known as Kyengera where they continuously began to torture them in an attempt to extract confessions from them.
“That very day, after beating me severely, they took chains and tied my hands, legs and my belly against metal sticks, akin to a cross to make sure that I don’t make any movement whatsoever for the whole night,” narrates Maniriho, adding that “I was naked.”
They went back in the morning and untied him before he fell in a pile. They took him to the hospital after realizing he was in agonizing pain.
He found when he was transferred to the prison facility that there were more Rwandans he knew who were also being relentlessly tortured. They included Sam Tumushabe, Eric Rugoroki and Moses Gato.
They would move him on several occasions to distinct cells, and he discovered more Rwandans facing a comparable ordeal in all of them. He remembers some individuals by name and face, but he could do little to save them.
When a Ugandan national fled from prison, their condition deteriorated. The wardens decided no longer to go to the toilet and carried a tiny bucket for them to use whenever they needed to relieve themselves.
According to Maniriho, one bucket served 60 inmates.
The food consisting of a meal of corn flour (posho or kawunga) and beans was served next to the same bucket that was used as a ‘toilet’.
“Life became so hard for me. I started bleeding in my private parts. I suspected it was due to the torture. They gave us maize flour to smear in my private parts to stop the bleeding but it didn’t work,” said Maniriho in a shocking revelation.
Maniriho and peers were revealed in March to Ugandan internal security officials who told them to “stop spying on my country.”
Maniriho and colleague were placed on a truck driven to the town of Ntungamo on June 29, in southwestern Uganda, where they were tossed in a marshland along the Uganda-Rwanda boundary in Rwempasha – Nyagatare district.
Maniriho warns Rwandans after his ordeal against entering Uganda.
“Any Rwandan who still feels they can try their luck in Uganda should think twice before making the mistake of crossing over. Ugandan security operatives are on the lookout and willing to inflict pain and torture to Rwandans without any remorse,” Maniriho said, adding that he lost his start-up capital and everything he had worked for during this period.
He said security agents seized the cash he had amounting to Rwf550,000 and 300,000 Ugandan shillings, among other stuff, which they never returned to him.
Several Rwandans have been saying they were illegally detained in Uganda for over two years, tortured before being dumped on the frontier with Rwanda, despite legally entering the country.
Around 180 Rwandans have been deported or unceremoniously dumped by Ugandan officials at the frontier since January this year.
Rwanda claims that Uganda does so with the complete assistance and cooperation of the Rwanda National Congress (RNC), a subversive organisation connected to renegade Lt. General Kayumba Nyamwasa, and others who aim to destabilize.
Uganda holds that Rwandans are being detained on suspicion of sabotaging Rwanda’s denied nation security. Kigali also argues that Kampala should bring the suspects to court or send them home instead of arbitrarily keeping them and torturing them.
In a meeting on 12 July between Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, DR Congo’s Joseph Antoine Tshisekedi, Uganda’s Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, and Angola’s João Lourenço in Luanda, it was agreed that Angola and the DRC would facilitate talks between Rwanda and Uganda to resolve the impasse.
Rwanda holds that Kampala must stop unlawful detentions, deportations and stop assistance for RNC or other organizations seeking to destabilize Rwanda. Meetings have not yielded much between President Kagame and President Museveni.